


Insight

by Viridian5



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Character of Color, Drama, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-08
Updated: 2007-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:25:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing what's going on doesn't always make it better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insight

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Bunker Hill" and "Immaculate Perception."
> 
> In a more skeletal form this was part of an intended [Median](http://archiveofourown.org/series/319) 4, but years later I don't remember everything I'd intended to write or feel like revisiting the start of the decline of a show I loved. I recently realized that this bit could stand on its own.

Seeing Tyr in the hallway near the machine shop, Harper had to say, "I'm sorry about your son and wife, Tyr."

"You've heard already?"

"Big ship, but small crew." Harper searched Tyr's face for clues. The whole situation had seemed odd, especially since Tyr had given away the Orca Pride's position, something Tyr was too smart to do by accident. Fishing, Harper said, "The other Orcas hadn't seemed like the brightest people."

Not that they deserved to be killed down to the last child for that, even if they were Nietzscheans. Though taking out the adults might have been okay. But that would leave the kids orphaned, and orphaned kids might grow up to be even bigger sons of bitches. Just look at Tyr.

This would require more thought.

"It dismayed me that you are far more Nietzschean than they were. I hear that you wanted to end the search for me on the third day." Tyr crossed his arms in a way that made his spurs stand out more. "Big ship, small crew."

"It dismays me too, believe me. If it makes you feel better, Dylan chastised me like I was a spoiled three-year-old for it. And you know, and I know, that you were actually fine. If the Genites had killed you or if you'd stuck around, we would have found you already by then."

Tyr actually smiled, looking pleased. Crazy Nietzschean.

"So, five days out there without us reading a blip. Wow." Suspicious.

"I knew Dylan would come for me."

"Yeah? I thought the same thing--" On Earth, and look at how that had turned out.

It hit Harper suddenly that now he knew what had been bothering him for the last five days. Yeah, the uncertainty and the wondering if Tyr had survived and Dylan snapping at him had been bad, but something else, something he couldn't put into words, had gnawed at him too, and not being able to word it or pin it down and say, "This is what it is," had somehow made it so much worse. Words were Harper's shield and friends; they converted life, the universe, and everything into digestible bits.

But now he had it.

How long would Dylan have stayed in the system looking for Tyr in the absence of finding Tyr definitively alive or dead? Six days? Eight days? Would he just have gone on looking until someone physically stopped him and persuaded Andromeda to let him or her take over command? Dylan had done the search for Tyr as if Andromeda Ascendant had nothing else to do, as if people didn't need help elsewhere. Meanwhile, months ago, a live Harper and the desperate people of Earth had needed Dylan's help, but Dylan didn't have the time, couldn't be bothered, to save his lover's homeworld from their Nietzschean overlords. Not even billions of enslaved people hanging in the balance could make Harper's need important.

Beka had been distressed over Tyr's disappearance too, which shouldn't surprise Harper, especially not when he knew she had a thing for pretty musclemen and he'd watched Tyr flirt back. Now, in Dylan and Tyr, she had a pretty muscleman as her right-hand man and her left.

Altogether, it really felt like Dylan, Tyr, and Beka were the Holy Trinity, while Harper was, at best, one of the lesser angels, maybe a cherub. Trance fit in wherever she felt like, since she was outside of Heaven, Earth, and anyone's philosophy, but Harper had been handed his assigned role.

"Are you still in this conversation?" Tyr asked.

Harper shrugged, but he knew it didn't look right. He tried to keep it light. "Yeah. I'm in mourning for an idea I had. No big."

But then he was held, and he had Tyr's mouth against his and Tyr's hand at the base of his skull to tilt his head upward into a devouring kiss, and depression got swept away in the rush of warm body and pressure and muscle and, damn, Tyr's tongue. Ironic that Dylan had gotten Harper used to being with someone bigger and wider than he was. Dylan....

Harper knew that he should fight this or something. He should. Because Tyr always had several reasons for anything he did, and Harper couldn't see any reason why Tyr would do this with him now except to scratch an itch during a desperate moment. Which this shouldn't be. Or as an attempt to find comfort in a time of mourning, but Harper didn't believe that either.

But Harper could feel Tyr's hard cock pressing into him, encouraging his own, and suddenly it didn't matter to him whether this would feel like a bad idea a few hours later, not when it felt like a _great_ idea now.

"Harper, Dylan wants you on the bridge," Andromeda said.

Some timing Andromeda had. Suspicious timing. Still, it might actually be important. "Gotta go, Tyr."

"The timing is suspicious."

"I know. Gotta check it out anyway. Be seeing you."

Would Tyr let go of him? Tyr did, without protest or hesitation.

Feeling obscurely guilty, not that he and Dylan had a thing anymore, Harper quickstepped it to the bridge and found Dylan alone there. "You wanted to see me?" Harper asked.

Dylan looked confused. "No."

Definitely Andromeda, then. Harper hoped she was happy, because the moment when he and Tyr might have gone for it was probably over. "Sorry. Wires must have gotten crossed. I'll get back to what I was doing." If only.

"Please stay, Harper."

Great. "Sure."

"Actually, I was wondering about that hug."

The other hug on Tyr in front of everyone, not the bump and grind hug. Dylan would have used a different tone asking about a bump and grind hug. "I was happy to see him alive, and I felt like letting him know."

"Yet you wanted us to call off the search on the third day."

"I'm a complicated guy. Dylan, you realize that the only way we could have been getting no life signs for days, then suddenly get a blip on the fifth day, is if he left the system and came back. Without telling us, mind you." Tyr had probably taken his son out of the system and left the Orca Pride to be slaughtered as a smokescreen.

"I'm... aware."

"So three days should have been time enough if he'd really been in trouble. People might have needed us elsewhere. I was being practical; it's a survival trait. You should know I play devil's advocate, Dylan. I've been hanging around for nearly two years, and you had me in closer, more intimate range for some of that time. Bye."

"Stay."

"Bite me."

"Harper?"

"I haven't appreciated the way you've been with me lately, so I see no reason to be around when you don't actually need me."

"I was being your commanding officer."

"You were playing stern, psycho daddy to stupid three-year-old me, and you don't talk like that to anyone else on board. I don't need it."

"We don't leave anyone behind."

"If Rommie hadn't threatened me into leaving Earth, would you have bothered to come down to see me or try to talk me out of it? Would you have wasted a moment's thought wondering or tried to help out? It's not like you wanted to bother going there anyway." Shut. Up. "I've had enough. Gotta go."

As the doors closed behind him, he heard, "Harper!" but he could probably get away with pretending he hadn't.

A fast walk to the machine shop showed that Tyr had moved on, which left Harper annoyed and relieved all at once. But he had to say, "Gee, thanks, Rommie. If I wanted to go talk to Dylan, I would. Or I could just bang my head against the wall to get the same effect."

She popped up in hologram form. "Your physiological readings suggested that you wanted a rescue from Tyr."

"Quickened heartbeat and breathing could be panic, but, gee, what else could it be? Oh, I don't know, lust maybe?"

"I want you and Dylan to be happy."

She meant well. "You and me both, babe. I'm just thinking that maybe we won't get that ever again. At least not together."

"I don't think that's true."

"His way of showing that he doesn't play favorites is to be _harder_ on me in public than he used to be when we weren't involved. Or maybe that's just the familiarity breeding contempt thing. I do have some self-respect, you know."

"And a spree with Tyr would help you keep your self-respect? I doubt that."

"It would make me feel better and wanted for a little while. Okay, I didn't want to be rescued, and I did too. Heat of the moment like that I could have excused. You know, we were hurting, it was grand passion, he grabbed me, we got swept away, blah blah blah. Now that you gave me time and forced us all to think about it, it won't be as easy."

She smiled. "Then I made the right decision."

By taking away Harper's ability to make decisions. Somebody else handing him a role to play. Would he have to start messing around with Andromeda's internal sensors so he could have some privacy? Things sucked more daily.

 

### End


End file.
